Nokia's Call-Making Camcorder

The Finnish phone maker has taken video recording a step further with its N93, but don't count on it to record or store long home movies

by Jack Ewing

Editor's Rating:

The Good: Excellent video quality for a phone

The Bad: Not enough memory

The Bottom Line: Don't ditch the camcorder yet, but this phone is a suitable stand-in for shorter movies on the go

Reader Reviews

Your child does something adorable. You witness breaking news. You spot Brad Pitt helping Angelina Jolie find a bathroom at a Swiss ski resort. (This actually happened to me.) Don't you wish you had a video camera in your pocket to capture the moment and post it on YouTube?

Wait, you do. At least you will, if you can get your hands on Nokia's (NOK) new N93—or the device proves to be the forerunner of a new generation of mobile phones. Handsets with limited video capability have been around for a while, but the $700 N93 is Nokia's first with pretensions of being a real video recording device. It's been available in Europe since August and becomes available online in the U.S. this month.

The phone comes with a Carl Zeiss zoom lens and 3.2-megapixel resolution, and the package includes Adobe (ADBE) Premiere Elements video editing software. Nokia even commissioned Gary Oldman, the British actor who plays Harry Potter's godfather Sirius Black, to make a short film with one. (The film, a hypnotic image of an inner tube floating in a swimming pool, can be viewed at www.nokia.com.)

FEATURE-RICH.

The N93, like other members of the N series, is also a music player, organizer, still camera, video and photo viewer, Internet surfing device, and, of course, a telephone. In general, I'm a big fan of the N series. They're fun and reliable, and they're the first handsets to get me to use Internet while I am on the go. (That's less true if you're in the U.S., where most mobile networks don't yet support the fast surfing available in Europe.)

But the N93 is designed to emphasize its video prowess, which naturally raises the question: How good is it? I took one on vacation to the French beach and winemaking region of Languedoc in August to find out.

The big advantage of the N93, especially for someone like me who doesn't like to carry around a lot of stuff while traveling, is its integration with something—the phone—that you would have along anyway. No question, Nokia has done a nifty job of cramming a lot into a reasonably small package. In fact, the N93 does so much that, even after several weeks of carrying it around, I felt I had only scratched the surface of its capabilities.

The most striking feature of the N93 is its rectangular, 2.4-inch screen, which flips up clamshell-style for normal use; sideways for Internet surfing or video conferencing; and outward to serve as a viewfinder for the camera. The camera automatically shifts its mode according to the position of the screen. Put it in viewfinder position, for example, and the handset is ready to shoot video. Clever.

MEMORY CHALLENGE.

As a camera, the N93 provides excellent picture quality—much better than the fuzzy images you normally associate with a mobile device. Still, it's not quite a replacement for a dedicated camcorder.

The N93's biggest drawback is memory. The removable 128-MB card filled up in no time. Even using the video camera very sparingly, and without having loaded the camera with any music files or other memory eaters, I ran out of space within a few days, in the middle of visiting a candy factory with my daughter. (Nokia claims eight minutes of recording time, if you also use the phone's internal memory and don't have a lot of other data taking up space.)

The best solution to the memory problem is to buy additional memory cards. The N93 can handle a card of up to 2 GB, which would allow 90 minutes of video, according to Nokia. I found memory for about $150, which of course adds substantially to the cost. You can also upload files to a personal computer, which is easy with the Nokia PC Suite software that comes with the handset. But who wants to lug a laptop on vacation?

MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH.

I have some other quibbles. Holding such a small device steady is a challenge, especially when operating the tiny zoom control. (The camera has video stabilization, but it can only do so much for a klutz like me.) I also found the display unclear and was never sure whether the device was recording or not.

For normal telephone conversations, the N93 is a bit clunky. In the open clamshell position, the housing for the camera lens and screen-swiveling mechanism presses into your cheek. I felt like Maxwell Smart in the old Get Smart TV series, talking into his shoe phone.

Still, the N93 is a very capable video camera for a mobile device. If you want to record your whole vacation, you'll probably still want a dedicated video camera. But if you never want to miss those YouTube moments, the N93 is a good gadget to have on hand.

Ewing is BusinessWeek's European regional editor.